Increase Essentials

There are plenty of bee books which provide the same old outdated and inaccurate information - NOT THIS ONE! John Connor is a master at conveying the basic and essential core information about what makes colonies perform well, and the many methods to expand colony numbers - solid information for the advancing amateur and experienced beekeeper alike. Increase Nucs, different styles of expansion nucs, summer increases (Kirk Webster and Mike Palmer are featured-bonus), swarm cell increases and queen management - queen banking, holding, judging their quality are all covered, and quite well. What helped me most were the truly insightful descriptions of split deep boxes to form double 4 or 5 frame nucs - this has been remarkably helpful in making increases this year. Almost more helpful was the information about using split 5 frame nucs to make double 2 frame start up colonies. 1 frame consisting of honey and pollen, and the other frame of bee covered brood with a queen cell, or new queen in a cage. The bees in both side cluster to the center as they keep each other warm - brilliant and highly useful. If you need one solid read for the long winter, for refresher breaks at any time during the year, or simply new insights to provide new and innovative ideas about how to manage and grow your bee workforce, this should be your #1 Go To book for great information - and not cheap and easy information. This book is solid. If you know a beekeeper who is getting deeper into the bee connection, this is the perfect gift. Go online and seek out John Connor's videos as well. When spending some time on an airplane, or needing a perfect read for that weekend away - again, this is the perfect book filled with totally insightful information. If you have bees, don't even hesitate. Grab this book and become a much more informed beekeeper. Weakly considered belief systems and pseudo-religious bee-guru fever runs amok in too many bee organizations - this thin but solid tome is an antidote and delivers. Grab it. Read it again and again. Your best ticket to becoming a better beekeeper!

I needed more info on selection of frames for splitting my beehives to increase my beeyard for future honey sales and pollinating out our crop. Since we primarly grow hay there is lots of pollen available. The hive split techniques in this book allowed me to go from 4 to 20 hives in a few weeks. Perfect timing to read early spring and summer. July was a productive month. I now have my 2nd honey supers placed even with splitting my parent hives.

Learn to create nucleus hives and boost your beehives

Recommended by a friend, can't wait to read this one.

This book contains some good information but is certainly not enjoyable to read. Also the information isn't organized very well. I don't regret purchasing it but it could be better.

Great book on the benefits of using nucleus hives versus package bees. A good reference book for developing overwintering care for your bees. Increase Essentials

My first experience with this book was finding it at the public library. After reading half way through .... I had to have my own copy. It is now full of highlighted sections, notes in the margins, sections underlined, etc. Straight forward, no nonsense, how to do it. I plan to re-read this every winter as part of my annual planning-for-next-year beekeeping activities, and to use it as a constant reference. Great info from years of experience.

If you want to quickly grow your apiary this is the book for you.

The information is very good, and it was nice to have it in a condensed volume (a lot of the information can be found in other sources). But the book was near unreadable due to the overpowering smell. I don't know if it is the ink, or wherever the book was warehoused, but it was gross. The smell would linger on my hands after reading. It was like a mix of hand sanitiser and a very old fashioned perfume... Yuck.